As the 20th century finishes receding, we will have to interrogate its artistic legacies and decide which few to carry with us further into the 21st, rescuing them from the Flood that will wash the rest away. Patrick White should be among these few.

If Miller’s book is an argument for dignity and acceptance, it is also an argument against politeness. It is an argument against letting stray homophobic remarks from your liberal friends just go in the interest of keeping the evening pleasant. It is an argument against letting someone change the topic of conversation when they tell you they feel uncomfortable about gay marriage. It’s an argument for demanding the part of the territory to which you are entitled.

One evening a couple of weeks ago, I passed a murderer in the front square of Trinity College Dublin. It was Malcolm MacArthur, a man in his late sixties who spent the last thirty years in prison for killing two strangers in July of 1982. He is arguably the most notorious murderer in Ireland’s notoriously murderous history.